Artists for Censorship!

Unlike we evil oppressive conservatives, the left believes that freedom of speech is sacrosanct.

Neil Young doesn't though. See, Neil Young learned that Spotify hosts Joe Rogan's podcast. Joe says stupid things about Covid. So in a huff, Neil threatened to pull his music from Spotify if they didn't ban Joe's podcast. You know... censor him. When Spotify chose freedom of speech, Neil boycotted away. This has since brought other leftist cranks out the woodwork like Joni Mitchell, the smarmy Harry and Meghan Sussex to join the demand for censorship, and "freedom champion" Apple (statement does not apply in China) is exploiting it to try to gain customers from Spotify.

I find it disturbing that an actual artist who I'm pretty sure has repeatedly used the idea of freedom of speech to justify all sorts of rotten things would now be pushing for censorship. I seem to remember him ranting about the evil "Republicans" (led by Joe Biden) when they put labels on music, for example - they called it censorship even though it didn't ban anything. Well, Neil defends himself by claiming that Rogan is spreading "disinformation" and thus should be stopped. But that's how freedom of speech works. Freedom of speech isn't about defending only popular speech or accurate speech or approved speech. It protects speech. And it sure as heck isn't about allowing only speech with which Neil agrees.

And don't get me wrong, I don't like Rogan and I think he's a menace. But so is Neil Young and so are so many other people. Movies promote gun violence and I think are responsible for why so many dumbasses use guns to settle disputes. Progressives are pushing hugely damaging lies about race and discrimination, gender and climate. Should we start banning those?

Some leftists, like Joy Behar know that freedom of speech is dogma but aren't going to stay out of a good pogrom, so she claims that while she doesn't believe Spotify should ban (read: censor) Joe Rogan, she encourages people to contact Spotify and let them know they are angry that they would host Rogan. To what purpose? To lead to his being banned. See her mental gymnastics? I don't support killing, but I encourage people to throw lots of stones.

It's always funny to me how the left wants to shut down debate. They talk about freedom and claim that freedom of speech is our most fundamental right. In fact, they still use the idea of "silencing" fill-in-the-blank as the most evil crime that conservatives commit (apart from "racism" and, Heaven help you, actual racism). But they never extend that right to people they don't like.

Look at cancel culture. Say the wrong thing and the left wants you erased. Or consider political correctness, the father of cancel culture. It was premised on the idea that if you could keep people from expressing ideas, those ideas would vanish. Thus, it sought to make it unacceptable to express politically incorrect thoughts. Mention that a suspect was black and you were racist. Mention that girls are different from boys and you're a sexist. There were a vast number of truths that were suddenly verboten. Then you had speech codes on colleges (bastions of freedom of speech) to silence "triggering thoughts" in the twisted name of "promoting" free speech by limiting it to only acceptable thoughts. You have the (re)invention of thought crimes where the prosecutor's view of your motive somehow makes the crime you commit a whole new crime. Better say smile during you next beatdown. Of course, there are the classic thought police of the Soviet and Chinese systems as well, and the secret police of "Democratic Socialist" states. The banning of books with the wrong words and wrong ideas. And so on... and so on.

It never seems to end, just the intensity and what is being suppressed. Welcome to the thought police Neil. Old man, look at you now.

Supreme Thoughts

I was finishing an article on Biden's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad first year when the news hit that Supreme Court Justice Breyer intends to retire. So it made sense to share some thoughts on that instead.

● First, stay calm. Talk radio will tell you about the end of the world, but looking at the possibilities, the GOP can't lose and the Democrats can't win. Breyer is the court's strongest intellectual leftist, so if they find the perfect replacement, nothing changes. But anything less than a perfect replacement hurts the left. Why?

● The problem the left is facing is that Breyer was the intellectual driving the court's left. He was smart and clever -- top notch. And he knew how to justify his views and how to trip up the conservative justices when they overreached. The other leftists remaining on the court just aren't that bright. Sotomayer, for example, plays well to leftist journalists because she speaks like they think, but she's a legal lightweight. If they replace Breyer with another lightweight like Sotomayer, the left loses its intellectual motor on the court and its ideology will get run over time and again.

● Unfortunately for them, finding someone of his caliber will be incredibly hard. There just aren't that many heavyweight justices out there. What's more, limiting the talent pool to black women makes it even harder. And that's before the other problem: the Democrats are looking for a partisan, not a thinker. In other words, they are looking for the very thing they should not be looking for.

● In fact, the black women already being mentioned lack intellectual prowess. That's bad for the left. They may pound the table with the best of them -- who knows -- but none of the ones mentioned will ever write the kind of scathing technocratic takedowns that swung a guy like Roberts from time to time and justified leftist thought in terms that made it hard to challenge.

● As an aside, forget Harris. Everything I see tells me that team Biden despises her, and I'm not surprised. She has a history of being seen as worthless by allies all the way from the beginning (she's the Peter Principle on steroids), and I don't see anyone on the left wanting to risk putting her on the court. Also, as I've said before, she lacks an ideological core and dances to the tune of corporate backers, making her a terrible choice for anyone wanting to defend an ideology.

● NBC tonight said that this was a chance for Biden to prove himself to blacks and shore up the support of an important (vital) constituency before the election. Indeed, recent polls show Biden's support among blacks slipping from 90% to 60%. Take that with a grain of salt, but Biden clearly has a problem and needs to energize his black base. Will this do it? Nope. Why?

● For one thing, this will happen before the election. That makes it a fait accompli when it comes time to vote. People don't tend to reward politicians for favors already done. Machiavelli tells us this, in fact. He says to inflict pain right away and all at once, because people will forget, but spread out rewards because people are fickle and hold off delivering until you get what you want. By the time the election rolls around, blacks will see this as "what have you done for me lately." And if she puts her foot in her mouth, she becomes an embarrassment. This only way this energizes blacks is if the Republicans step in it and come across as actual racists.

● Secondly, I'm not convinced that black men are all that excited about rewards given to black women. There seems to be a real disconnect there.

● I actually think this is aimed at energizing "women." I think Biden thinks that "women" are a collective. But they aren't. White women and black women have suffered a disconnect with a lot of anger aimed at white women by black women (think back on the "hey, white woman" articles), so picking a partisan (i.e. a yeller rather than an ideologue thinker) black woman could further alienate white women. Also, the angry white women faction is notoriously self-centered and tramples over their allies to get their share. Giving this seat to a black woman will not be seen as giving them their share.

● Ultimately, I think black and white female support goes up at first on principle -- more with blacks than with whites, and some black male support as well. But the bounce fades quickly and their support will depend on other issues in the election cycle.

● So how should Republicans handle this? I would float some names right now of qualified but moderate-left black women, Hispanic women, a Muslim, and a lesbian or two, and I would say these women are quite acceptable and we would support them. Then explain what kinds of qualifications you think they need. This prevents a charge of racism and obstruction because the GOP identified several qualified leftist women and what they think is important. Biden and the media, however, will respond by going insane and tearing these women apart, which is really bad optics. It also creates the opportunity that they may invent reasons these women aren't acceptable which ultimately trap the candidates the left want... "hey, you said they needed this! Now you're changing your mind??"

● I said we can't lose, but we will lose if we come across as racists. Censure anyone who goes that route.

● You could also argue that the left wins by replacing an expiring (older) judge with a younger judge, but it's unrealistic to think we can block appointments for three more years. That would make us look terrible. So name some good ones and let them pick a bad one who isn't up to Breyer's intellectual level and in-fight.

● That said, we all need to brace for more hero worship from the left regardless of who they pick. Watch for sycophantic documentaries, fainting legal groupies and Democrats going to therapy with sex fantasies involving their new crush. See The Notorious RGB for reference (LINK and LINK).

Those are my thoughts. As long as we don't act like racist obstructionists, this cannot hurt us, but it is a very delicate balancing act for the left, one I don't think they can manage because they've lost their minds and want the wrong things now.

Your thoughts?

Dominos Pizza's Cynical Ad

Just a quick thought on cynicism... and Domino's Pizza.

I believe the real national crisis we face today is cynicism. The age of cynicism actually started in the 1950's (I've discussed that before). That led to the destruction of many of the institutions needed to hold society together in the 1960's and 1970's. The 1980's were a brief reverse of that trend, but by the 1990's we were back at it hard. Today, we live so deeply in the culture of cynicism that we "question" everything, we mistake cynicism for wisdom, we mistake snark for reasoned debate and we pride ourselves in our ignorance. It allows people to dismiss objective fact as a subjective point of view, to think truth is relative, and to dismiss anything because the "wrong" person espouses it. It poisons relationships. It poisons society. It poisons learning. We have reached a point where we know nothing, believe nothing, trust nothing, and can achieve nothing.

How does this relate to Dominos?

Charity.

There has long been a debate as to whether or not disclosing an act of charity invalidates the act. We all agree it is a good thing, for example, to help people in need (well, most agree, some are too cynical to understand this). But many think that advertising the fact you acted charitably invalidates your charitable act because, by telling people, you convert the intent of your act of charity from a selfless act of kindness into a selfish act of self-promotion. And naturally, cynical people are masters at rhetorically finding self-interest to negate good deeds.

Are they right?

No. The charitable act is still a charitable act. The person helped is still better off, and the act was done without requirement. These are good things and should not be dismissed cynically. We should be encouraging them regardless of motive.

That said, I would offer one caveat. This is when the act of charity was itself done cynically. How can we tell? Famous people often do some charitable acts before a camera when they are in trouble and need good PR. Companies do this too. Or how about when the effort spent advertising the charitable act far exceeds the act of charity itself? I would consider that cynically exploiting the goodwill of people because the effort was not in the charitable act, but in exploiting the charitable act. While I would not criticize the act of charity itself, I would criticize the exploitation. In fact, I think this type of behavior only adds to the culture of cynicism because it confirms the false idea that charity is something people do to virtue signal.

And that brings me to Dominos.

Dominos is running an ad during NFL games (and more). In this ad, they talk about how delivery fees are killing small business restaurants and how they decided to help. They bought $100,000 worth of delivery fee cards "and no one paid for delivery fees." And then some small business people praise Dominos for their efforts. Angelic, right?

Or is it?

Let's do the math. Start with the $100,000 spent. Divide it by 50 states... you get $2,000 per state. Divide that by, let's say, two major cities per state. We're down to $1,000 per major city. If Dominos advertised, "We just spent $1,000 in your city on small business's delivery fees," would you be impressed? Hardly. Dominos gave these out as $50 cards. So basically, they gave $50 gift cards to 20 businesses in the two biggest cities in each state. Still impressed? I'm not, but it's charity and I will commend it. I'm glad they did it. Nice.

BUT... then they advertised it. It's in heavy rotation too, so they've probably spent $10 million advertising this fact (Dominos spends about $40 million a year on advertising). That means they spent about $100 advertising every dollar they actually spent helping. I would call that cynical exploitation. You?

Here's the ad: LINK. Tell me it doesn't suggest that they bought a TON of these.

***

As an aside, all the cynicism about people only acting out of self-interest comes from a deeply cynical and wrong philosophical argument. The argument comes from an apocryphal story involving Lincoln and another passenger arguing on a coach about whether or not altruism (a truly selfless act) exists. As they argue, they come upon a pig stuck in the mud. It's squealing in pain. Lincoln jumps out and saves the pig, ruining his suit. He then notes to the other passenger, if there was no such thing as altruism, then why would I ruin my suit to help the pig? The other passenger retorts: you did it out of self-interest because you could no longer stand to hear the suffering, so you ultimately were only doing this to make yourself feel better. Cynics latch onto this and argue it means there is no such thing as a selfless act.

But they forget Lincoln's reply. He said, if there is no such thing as altruism, where does the impulse to stop others from suffering come from in the first place? And he is right. Altruism exists. To argue otherwise falsely devalues the human spirit.

Thoughts?

More Congratulations Are In Order!

Congratulations to Maya Angelou. The Mint has announced that it's putting out a series of quarters with women on them... and one of them is Maya Angelou! Naturally, the media is treating Maya's encoinment as an "historic" and "groundbreaking" achievement. But what ground did she break?

Oh, I know. She's the first black person on our currency, right? Well, no. That would be George Washington Carver, Booker T. Washington and Jackie Robinson. So, not the first black. Then she must be the first woman, right?! No, not that either. That would be Martha Washington, Pocahontas, Susan B. Anthony, Helen Keller and Sacagawea, plus of course Lady Liberty. So she's the 7th woman and the 4th black. So what exactly does the media think is so groundbreaking then? Well, she's the first black woman. //rolls eyes That is how identity politics works: if you can carve out a favored category, then your achievements -- no matter how many came before you, suddenly are supposedly unique. It's kind like the way dog shows pretend there are two types of Beagles below 13 inches tall and 13-15 inches tall. And where pushing race and gender are concerned, there is no hair small enough that you can't split another Beagle.

At least she's part of a veritable rainbow of women on these coins, right?! A broad coalition of women of all shapes and sizes and colors, right? Uh, no. The Mint will be minting quarters with a white woman, a black woman, an Hispanic woman and a Chinese-American woman. It will not be minting any lesbians, Trans-women, India-Indians, non-Chinese Asians, Arabs, Jews, Muslims, or handicapped women, not to mention the portly, the shortly and the tall. Sorry suckerettes, but when it comes to identity politics some Beagles are more equal than others.

They did choose the best black woman they could find though, right? You tell me. Are people in a hundred years going to wonder who the hell this obscure writer was? Do you think they would struggle more or less to remember Rosa Parks or Harriet Tubman. Even among modern women, who is more likely to be remembered? This friend of the Clintons or Oprah, Condoleezza Rice, or Serena Williams.

You tell me.

Covid Was A Chinese Biological Attack on Foreign Militaries

I'm not paranoid. You know this. But sometimes, facts lead to a conclusion that sounds paranoid. In this case, I've long known a series of facts which suggest that Covid was intentionally released by the Chinese military as an attempt to cripple foreign militaries before some sort of Part B which never came. Observe.

As you know, I pay attention to the world. I gather facts. I don't believe conclusions or treat theories as fact until I am thoroughly convinced. In the case of Covid, the facts have never fit the narrative. The "facts" we're supposed to believe are this:

1. The first Covid case was found in Wuhan China in December 2019.

2. The first case was a man who worked in a "wet market" where bats were eaten.

2a. Alternate fact: China ran a lab in the area which was investigating bat-infested Covid and it escaped.

3. Covid spread to the outside world in January 2020.

Here's the thing. The first fact is false. There are recorded cases of Covid in China in November 2019 and stories of unconfirmed (not tested) Covid in massive numbers of very sick people in China in October 2019. That means the first case was possibly as early as October 2019. That means the first case is not the first case. Nor would it rationally be the first case anyway. In fact, even if batguy is the first known case, batguy still is not the first case... he's the first confirmed case. This is because Covid looks like the flu, which tells us logically that hundreds of prior cases existed along with many deaths before someone decided "Hey, this one's kind of strange, let's look into it." So we don't know when it really started.  But we do know that if batguy is not Patient Zero then where batguy got it isn't relevant because he's not the guy who started it. So the bat theory is a distraction. The escape argument also happens too late to be the true cause.

So the real facts we know are:

1. Covid was around somewhere between October and November 2019 at least.

2. The origin is otherwise unknown, except it appears in Wuhan - disease spread theory tells us this... diseases spread in the golden spiral pattern, meaning they cluster at ground zero and then thin out from there. The cluster is at Wuhan.

More facts you have not heard** (see below):

3. October 2019, the City of Wuhan held the World Military Games. That's right. Thousands of soldiers from the militaries of 100 countries went to China to compete. (This has never been considered as part of the Covid story as far as I can tell.)

4. When the soldiers got there, they found Wuhan to be a ghost town. No one was on the streets, most things were closed. The Chinese claimed this was for the soldiers' benefit, but that makes no sense.

5. Hundreds of these soldiers got very sick. They returned home and spread it.

6. They reported these illnesses. They were told it was probably just the flu, even if it wasn't limited to flu symptoms. Subsequent complaints were dismissed on the basis this couldn't be Covid because it happened before batguy, but we know batguy is a false fact, so the dismissals are false.

7. The soldiers were told not to talk about it, which is only done with soldiers for security reasons.

8. The military has not publicly investigated this.

One more speculative-'fact' to add. I am not a biological scientist so I can't say this for sure, but there is a lot of talk about Covid being man made. It's also the first disease I've heard of which covers its track for two days so it can spread unchecked and it's unusually infectious. If it actually killed, it would be the perfect biological weapon.

Now put this together.

Think about how hyper-aggressive the Chinese have been in recent years. It makes sense given Chinese thinking to infect these soldiers intentionally, i.e. to use this biological weapon against a perfect target which will carry Covid home and infect their militaries and command structures, crippling over 100 of the militaries of the world. That would leave everyone incapable of stopping China from doing whatever else they had planned, e.g. the Marines are not coming to save Taiwan if half of them are dead or too sick to fight. What would China do with a free hand? Don't know, that part never happened. It didn't happen because Covid turned out to be a dud. It killed old people and some sick people, but wasn't very deadly in the wild compared to what it looked like in the lab, which is often the case.

I think the military knows this because they supposedly haven't investigated. It makes no sense that the military would not investigate so many illnesses coming from one event, that's not how the military works. They investigate eveything. I think the truth is they did investigate and know the truth, but have decided to stay silent (even silencing soldiers to hush it up). Why be silent? Fear that it will outrage the public. Think about how angry people are at China over the batguy theory, which looks like an accident. Imagine the rage if it was announced that Covid was actually an intentional attack on our soldiers and now grandma is dead. The public would want war.

So why was Wuhan empty? Was it really because Covid had escaped into Wuhan before the soldiers got there as the Daily Mail suggests (see below)? No. The time that took to develop meant it would have hit the news as people got sick and posted about it online. It would have taken time to see what was happening and cut the internet and shut the city down. That could not be done without getting out. Instead, the ghost town had to be intentional. The Chinese sent everyone home because they didn't want their weapon spreading into the Chinese population. They told everyone to stay home to avoid this army of soldiers or else and people quietly bought it. I guarantee you that everyone who came into contact with the soldiers was immediately isolated thereafter.

Interestingly, none of this ever hit the news, even as a theory.  Why?  That's actually our fault:  left and right bought the cover story and turned on each other over it... "damn Chinese bat eaters" vs. "you're racist."  No one bothered to use their brains.

** Then this. Today, for the first time ever, I've seen this theory appear in the news... sort of. The Daily Mail has it. It's a small story, not front page, and it's focus is wrong -- it treats it like the soldiers stumbled upon the disaster rather than being aimed at them, but the facts I mention above are confirmed. Here's the article. Read it all the way through: Canadian Military.

Thoughts?

A Date We're Gonna Make Live In Infamy

Hi all. First, let me say that for some reason, I'm having a hard time posting comments. I'm not ignoring you, I just can't seem to post them.

 

Secondly, tomorrow is the anniversary of January 6?? What a ridiculous thought. We're going to have an anniversary for the day a couple hundred douchebags vandalized the capital building? Really? Why? Oh yeah, because the Democrats want to pretend this was an attempted coupe and (Heavens) it might have succeeded? Riiiiiight. The United States was going to fall because a couple hundred retards broke into a building? Laughable. At least when they burned the Reichstag, they destroyed the building. All they had to do here was hose off the beer smell. But leave it to the Democrats to exploit anything. Pathetic.  They really should change their name to the Propaganda Party.

Congratulations

Congratuations to Chicago for winning the Murder Capital of the Year award over stiff competition (no pun intended) from other woke cities. Chicago had 797 murders. New York, Philly, pot-headed Portland, Minnesota, etc. etc. All over the country, people are dead to satisfy the smugness of the politically stupid. Wokeness kills.